Sunday, November 8th, 2009
Editing is going great. I’m an hour into the film now, and really happy with how most of it is coming together.
I jammed last week, working on all night on the movie, sleeping for a while, going to work, then coming home to do it all over again. But I absolutely love it.
This is when all the hard work of shooting pays off. This is when it finally — FINALLY — starts to look like a movie. It’s flowing pretty well, and I particularly spent a lot of time editing the zombie sequences.
First it took me a awhile to pick the music I wanted, because that affects how it will cut together. And anything goes here. Slow-motion, dissolves, jump cuts, it doesn’t have to be real time, so it was a blast editing that stuff together. One sequence in particular is awesome, a long shot with Guy and Randall running through a hallway of zombies. That one shot took us about 8 hours to get, from lighting through blocking and then final takes. It lasts about 30 seconds.
The entire sequence is longer than that, of course, because it cuts nicely with other shots that worked fabulously. I can’t wait to share this with people. It’s going to be cool.
And so far, I love the tone of it all. I’ll need to look at it overall when I have everything laid down for pacing, and I know I’ll have to tighten up the beginning a little, but this is going to have a cool, hyper-realistic tone about it. Almost gothic, kind of like a comic book. I love it.
Audio will take a lot of work, and we knew it would. We tried our best, but there were just things out of our control (trains, planes, people driving by). Hopefully we can clean it up, but that’s a whole different phase (and one I’m secretly dreading, but it’ll come much later).
The performances, also, are great. It’s really weird watching myself, though. My character is such a high-strung control freak. Not saying that I’m not like that in real life, but, hey…
So I’ll tackle more editing this week, as well. On tangent stuff, we held callbacks for the radio announcer part on Saturday, and think we may have it cast after we get two more people to read, and we’ll meet with someone this week to get work started on the title sequence. And 2nd A.D. Craig is busy rounding up more CDs from local bands who want to submit. We want to use as much local talent as possible.
Today I’ve been cleaning and doing mountains of laundry, just trying to get caught up on life in general. I miss everyone. I haven’t seen much of my family lately, or anyone really. I haven’t seen my nephew TJ or my nieces since the wrap party. I miss them.
But all in due time, slowly it feels like I’m able to catch my breath. but with an impending festival deadline, it looks like I won’t really get to slow down until December. Oh my gosh — DECEMBER??!! When did this happen?
Better get back to work, then. I have to fold my socks. And by fold, I mean dump into a drawer.
Have a good week,
-r.
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Tuesday, October 13th, 2009
I’m excited yet daunted by the next phase: Post-production.
We still have to get one more day with car interior scenes, and if everything goes right, it looks like we’ll be able to get that on Saturday. Then principal photography will be done. I simply can’t believe it.
I’l digitize the next few tapes this week so that I’ll be all caught up. It takes me about 2 hours per tape to get it into the computer, and we amassed three more tapes in Oklahoma. I’ll also fine-tune the trailer and we’ll get that online probably next week.
It’s going well so far, and seeing the rough version of the trailer has me pumped. We’re actually going to have a movie here! This wasn’t all for naught.
But then I’ll dig right into the real editing. I’ll simply start at the beginning and work my way through. And this is the part I love, when it starts to actually take shape and form the story. I should have plenty of stuff to work with, Jerod did a great job of covering scenes. Just putting it all together will be the challenge.
And that means I’ll pretty much be chained to my computer for the next couple of months. Then after we get a rough cut, we’ll tweak and fine tune, do color correction then head into audio work (my least favorite part). We’ll add music and layer the sound design. It’s also going to take some foley and ADR work (basically dubbing the dialogue that will be unfixable). So this film’s journey is long from being over, just the first step will be done.
And it’s a monumental step, believe me. Putting the trailer together, I was amazed at the scope of this thing. It’s HUUUGE. We did a lot with very little, and my amazing crew pulled it off. I just don’t know how we did it. It was ambitious, to say the least, and at times I thought I would go crazy.
But we just chipped away a little piece at a time. And that’s what we’ll keep doing. But I will be ABSOLUTELY thrilled that I won’t have to mess with any more scheduling (well, mostly — we’ll still need to cast a radio announcer part).
It’ll be interesting to see the audience reaction to the rough-cut trailer at the film panel I’m participating in tomorrow. I’m kind of nervous. It’s the first time anyone will see any of the film. OK, I’m more than nervous, but it’s good.
So, exciting stuff, and I need to move myself into a different mind set now. Post-production. We’re finally here. It’s gonna be a movie, baby!
Onward,
-r.
Tags: The Dead Can't Dance
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Thursday, September 24th, 2009
On Wednesday, we finally were able to get the final scene with Stupid, the good zombie, played by my dear friend Wade Hampton. So I’m pleased as punch to announce that WADE HAMPTON IS WRAPPED on “The Dead Can’t Dance.” (The pic is from the Independent School shoot, which seems like years ago.)
And as we get closer to wrapping up principal photography, things are getting emotional for me. Believe me, I want to wrap this baby up for good, but I also hate to see it end, in a way. We’ve all become such a filmmaking family, getting to know each others’ quirks, strengths and personalities. I’ve had the very good fortune of stumbling onto an amazing crew and I hope the friendships we’ve developed keep growing.
Especially with Sir Christopher and his family, whose farm near Udall is where we shot all our exterior road scenes. We are now wrapped at that location, as well, and I hated to see it end, just because he and his family are such great, warm, inviting, gracious people. Making this film has certainly been an adventure, but what has made it great is all the people we have come to know and work with, all sharing in the same pursuit: to make a movie and tell a story.
On Sunday, we’ll get an interior car scene done, then on Tuesday we’ll get a quick bar exterior scene. Then on Oct. 6 and 7, we’ll travel to Oklahoma to get the Quik Stop scenes. And then, lo and behold, we will be done!
I just can’t believe it. I’m excited and overwhelmed at the next stage, too, though. This is going to take a LOT of post work, but I think I’ll really enjoy it. This is the phase I love, where it starts forming the actual movie. Then there’s lots of audio and foley work to be done as well as digital effects. Just another phase of the adventure, and it’ll be great.
For now, I’ll enjoy the few shooting days we have left, and focus on organizing a wrap party. And I need to set up some photo galleries and cut a trailer in the very near future.
I have a line in the movie, where I tell Stupid, “So long, buddy.” I really hate to be done with him. But I love that we are, too.
Dancing to the finish line,
-r.
Posted in Inspiration, Picture editing, The Dead Can't Dance, Writing, acting, postproduction, production, title sequence, zombies | No Comments »
Monday, August 31st, 2009
Yesterday was absolutely gorgeous out, and we were able to go out to the country road near Andover and get all 5 scenes done — an amazing feat, with little time to spare, just as the sun was setting. Fantastic!
When we rock, we rock. We’ve become such a machine at this point — the only hard thing is getting people rounded up early in the morning, so we got started a little later than I wanted, but still, not bad at all.
And Jerod and I work great together. I can’t reiterate the importance of a good relationship with your D.P., and I think Jerod and I transcend that. We really have a groove for how each other works and what we want (at least I think so, he probably thinks I’m an idiot). And besides that, we’re just becoming great friends. All awesome…
(The only bad thing this day was that our tripod got mixed in with Jerod’s brother’s equipment from the music video shoot — so we had to borrow one from Wichita State University’s media resource center, and it wasn’t a very good one. But we worked with it.)
Our amazing crew was great again (so was Denae, our intern for the day who was thrown right into the mix and was a hard worker — she even held her own against the crew’s banter). There was stellar work from our art dept., Loni and Megan, who cut a piece of plexiglass to fit my car window so it would look like it was smashed and had blood oozing out of it. Perfect!!!
We also used Randall’s son this day as a child zombie, which I think he really enjoyed.
I love one scene we got this day in particular, where we have cars “stalled” on the road and people hanging out of them, dead. We shot it several times with our car mount as dolly and with our characters moving through the action. Wonderfully creepy. (It’s not quite as smooth as I would like, though it IS great. I’ll be experimenting with some stabilization filters and found some great Final Cut Pro plug-ins to experiment with in post).
We also used the car mount to get some great stuff of Guy and TJ riding in the truck in a 2-shot from a side view. And this being Kansas and all, we even got a gorgeous shot of them in front of a sunflower field.
All in all, an absolutely beautiful day (though today the back of my neck is throbbing from sunburn, since I was basically bent over looking at a monitor for most of the day). But it felt fantastic to be working again. I really do love this (otherwise, as Jerod said, we wouldn’t put ourselves through this), and it’s an amazing feeling when it all clicks.
So I was able to cross 5 more scenes of the list. Monumental! Looking ahead, the weather looks unpredictable, but we’re going to charge ahead and hope for the best. Really, really hope for the best.
Going to get more footage digitized this week, and I can very soon cut a teaser trailer. Lots of people have been asking about the movie, and I can’t wait to share it.
Good things, good vibes. Have a good week!
-r.
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Thursday, August 20th, 2009
Like I said, I’ve only digitized footage (importing it into the computer) up to “reel” 6, so I don’t have a lot of footage to actually cut into a scene yet and and play around with.
But looking through Brandon’s amazingly detailed log notes, I realized I did have enough to at least cut together one scene with me and TJ. I was just chomping at the bit to get something done, and it distracted from me just sitting around freaking out.
I was nervous at first, as this was the first actual editing to be done on the film, but then I got going and loved it. This is one of my favorite parts in the process, when you have it all in front of you and you start cutting it together to actually craft a scene. And I had a blast!
It’s a small intimate scene between Dax and Eddie as they discuss why Eddie doesn’t want to go to college, and why Dax really wants him to. And I hope that scenes like this let people into the hearts and minds of these characters, so that they’re just not following a bunch of idiots around running away from zombies. Emotional investment. Yes, even in a zombie film. Actually, especially in a zombie film. Because if you don’t care about these guys, you’re probably going to start rooting for the zombies. Not good.
It cut together amazingly well, though one long take I wanted to get to work out that great, and I liked my performance much better in other takes. It’s only the first rough cut of the scene, but I’m amazingly happy with it. It’s about 4 minutes in duration. I think it took us about 4 hours to shoot. I remember we were still shooting it, after an already long day at Independent School, at 3:30 a.m.
I also got to play around with an sound effect sampling and audio mixing just a tad. Cleaning up the audio is going to be a chore, but I feel a little better about it now that I’ve played with it a little.
Actually, I feel a lot better. This thing is going to be a freakin’ movie!
… One scene at a time, anyway. That’s just how it works. Simply amazing…
-r.
Tags: Picture editing
Posted in Inspiration, Picture editing, The Dead Can't Dance, postproduction | No Comments »
